The document discusses the importance of e-skills for Europe and defines what e-skills encompass. It notes that while demand for IT professionals exceeds supply, efforts must be made to close skills gaps and mismatches. E-skills include IT practitioner skills, IT user skills, and e-business skills. The development of e-skills is important for social cohesion, inclusion, and allowing individuals to realize their full potential. Priority actions include developing a long-term strategic approach, improving labor market data and planning, and promoting multi-stakeholder partnerships for e-skills development.

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PhD, Stefan IOVAN, West University of Timisoara, Mathematics &
Informatics Faculty, Computer Science Department, stefan.iovan@infofer.ro
October 24-25 , 2013
The Importance and the Definition of
e-Skills for Europe

2. Introduction
Despite the economic downturn and three consecutive
difficult years for the IT sector, the long-term demand for
professionals with IT and e-business skills still exceeds the
supply, in particular in user industries.
This situation has been analysed in depth by the
representatives of the Member States of European Union,
resulting a benchmarking report on 2002.
This study assessed the state of play with respect to the
perceived e-skills gap and identified national and regional
policy initiatives as well as the lessons that can be learnt
from them
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The Importance of e-Skills
IT has considerable impact on the overall economy and a
significant effect on productivity growth approaching several
percentage points in many countries.
The use of IT throughout the value chain contributes to
improved business performance and trends suggest that IT will
continue to be a driver of growth.
While effective use of IT can make major improvements in
an enterprise’s productivity and competitiveness, the need for
changes in human resource development, government support
policies and favourable company culture in achieving this has not
always been sufficiently taken into account. And these issues must
be managed effectively. Attempts at introducing IT successfully in
adverse conditions often fail.

4. IT is adding automation and intelligence to every product
and to the way products are manufactured, transported and
recycled. In the longer term the need for information-handling
capacity and intelligence will grow in all products and in everyday
services.
As the significance of technological tools and processes
continues to grow within almost all branches of industry, the
comparative productivity between enterprises in different countries
will increasingly depend on how effectively and efficiently the
technologies are used by the staff, present and future employees
and managers.
The competitiveness of European industry is thus
dependent on both the effective use of IT for industrial and
business processes and the knowledge, skills and competences of
existing and new employees.
Thus the global performance of European enterprises will
depend increasingly on differences between the rates of take-up
and effective functioning of new technologies in European
enterprises compared with those in their competitors in other
economies.
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The e-skills concept
The term “e-skills” encompasses a wide range of capabilities (knowledge,
skills and competences) and issues with an e-skills dimension span over a
number of economic and social dimensions. The ways individuals interact
with IT vary considerably, depending on the work organisation and
context of a particular employer, or home environment.
The term e-skills covers mainly three categories:
IT practitioner skills: the capabilities required for researching,
developing and designing, managing, the producing, consulting,
marketing and selling, the integrating, installing and administrating, the
maintaining, supporting and service of IT systems;
IT user skills: the capabilities required for effective application of
IT systems and devices by the individual. IT users apply systems as tools
in support of their own work, which is, in most cases, not IT. User skills
cover the utilization of common generic software tools and the use of
specialized tools supporting business functions within industries other the
IT industry;
e-Business skills: the capabilities needed to exploit opportunities
provided by IT, notably the Internet, to ensure more efficient and
effective performance of different types of organizations, to explore
possibilities for new ways of conducting business and organizational
processes, and to establish new businesses.

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The competence needs of both IT practitioners and users are
changing rapidly, as IT develops and the range of new applications
widens. Even though the labor market in some Member States has
succeeded in meeting most of the quantitative gaps in terms of skills
gaps and mismatches are often expanding.
It is necessary to distinguish the following deficiencies:
Shortage: a insufficient numbers of skilled people in the
labor market or in an occupational segment;
Gap: a competence shortfall between the current and needed
competence levels of individual staff within organizations;
Mismatch: a mismatch between the competence of the
trainee or graduating student/learner and the expected
competence needs of the employers. Mismatch is assumed to
arise from course/curricula misalignment.

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Strengthening Social Cohesion
Europe needs a sense of vision, which places economic
growth and performance within a broader framework aiming to
strengthen social cohesion and improve the quality of live for all.
Whilst initial interest in e-skills at the European level was
stimulated trained practitioners in the IT industry in the late 1990s,
the issues reaches down much more broadly to the whole
population.
The task of broadening and deepening people’s e-skills in
an important objective: to help each individual realise their full
potential and to participate in the democratic life of their
communities at a time when all aspects of life are increasingly
becoming reliant on IT-technologies.
Individuals must be enabled to engage in and steer their
own lifelong. The task must be to find new approaches through
which each person actively participates as an active citizen in the
process of lifelong learning – where indeed there is a thirst for
learning.

8. Moving beyond the current base for e-skills training
The level of competence in IT user skills in Europe remains
too low. Only about 27% of the European Union workforce has
received job-related computer training. The figures are lower for
those n lower incomes: only 4% of low-income earners have ever
received any IT training paid for by their employer. For women,
the figure is just 3% [6].
Obtaining e-skills is not a one-off event – the speed of
technological change requires that skills need continually to be
kept up-to-date and relevant. In addition, learning objectives tend
to be increasingly individual in character. Due to this, IT training
has to be based on a methodological approach suitable to empower
learners to define their skill needs themselves and be able to steer
learning processes to a large extent on their own.
Lifelong learning has to lie at the heart of Europe’s path
forward. This has already been taken into account by for instance
the European employment strategy and a range of activities
launched by the Commission on education and training. 8

9. Many women seem to perceive work in IT as “nerdy” and
“too technical” and a lack of strong female role models
discourages many young women from entering the industry. Only
around one in live IT students are women [8].
Enterprises and society are losing out on a valuable
resource. To meet this challenge we need to provide the right
incentives and focus to invest in education, skills and
competencies. A more holistic approach to e-skills training is
needed which seeks to empower the individual and to help enrich
the quality of life Europe’s citizens. It is appropriate therefore to
tackle e-skills further development within a framework which
stresses the need for work/life balance. Gender issues need to be
mainstreamed within the e-skills debate.
Enterprises often appear to be more inclined to recruit new
workers with the required skills than to ensure that their current
workers are adequately retrained with those skills. Older workers
generally receive significantly less training than prime-age
workers, particularly so if they are low-skilled. Measures to
increase training for older workers and to keep them in the labour
force longer would need to go hand-in-hand. 9

10. Linking e-skills training and social inclusion
Europe’s path forward to be information society has
repeatedly stressed the importance of striving for social inclusion
and working to counteract the digital divide. Market forces on
their own will not close the digital divide and indeed may in fact
widen it. Innovative public measures and multi-stakeholder
activities are required.
Equality of access to IT infrastructure is an important
issue: however, access is in itself not enough. An approach to e-
skills which is rooted in a desire for social inclusion and greater
social cohesion will be reflected in the need to make measures to
assist those sectors of the community who suffer disadvantage
and discrimination, including minority groups, those with
disabilities and those suffering from unemployment and poverty
to make effective use of IT.
More, and more effective e-skills training should also
help create better, safer and more efficient jobs and workplaces. 10

11. The European e-skills activity identified the following main
priority actions:
1. Developing a long-term strategic approach to the IT sector.
A. The relentless evolutionary change of IT continues to
provide a complex and moving target for policy-markers and
education and training providers in relation to e-skills. It essential
to develop a long term strategic approach to the IT sector and IT
occupations.
B. All stakeholders should promote the importance of the
IT sector and the e-skills issue in Europe taking also into account
important developments in other countries such as the United
States, China and India, in order to ensure that global sourcing is
able to reconcile the competitiveness and flexibility essential to
businesses with promising career perspectives needed by
European citizens.
C. The Commission should facilitate this process at the
European level, monitor the competitiveness of the IT industry in
the European Union and encourage Member States in their efforts
to maintain and enhance the attractiveness of the European Union
for inward migration of high-tech workers. 11

12. 2. Improving planning and data availability about the IT labour
market. A multiple scenario-based methodology should be further
elaborated and implemented, based on the recommendations made by
the supply and demand working group, to elaborate different
scenarios which can help assess future demand and long-term
developments. EU level estimates must be based on national statistics
and jointly agreed economic and industry surveys and analyses. Data
on expected demand levels based on the chosen option should be
made available to universities and training providers in order to
implement such a long-term vision.
A. Stakeholders should nominate relevant experts to
participate actively in designing, conducting and evaluating the
process. The Commission should support the development of e-skills
foresight scenarios in co-operation with the OECD and Cedefop as
well as the establishment of a European network of experts in this
field;
B. More qualitative research is also needed to define future
skill needs and the need for new statistics and classification. Eurostat
and national statistical offices should work together to clarify, agree
on and implement best practices in classifying and gathering the data
needed. 12

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3. Promoting European e-skills multi-stakeholder partnerships. In
the late 2000s many important initiatives were launched by
leading stakeholders, notably IT companies, in the field of e-
skills. However, they were often disconnected and lacked the
necessary critical mass to maximise their impact.
A. Co-operation between stakeholders should be strengthened to
research appropriate legal, financial and institutional frameworks
for multi-stakeholder partnership development and foster the
development of innovative initiatives;
B. Member States and Commission should review existing
regulations and model contracts and consider amending those
regulations that inhibit multi-stakeholder partnership in e-skills
education and training.
C. Comprehensive and integrative initiatives, such as projects for
developing a European IT career development system and IT
career portal, could serve to deliver the economic benefits of
multi-stakeholder partnerships foe e-skills development in
Europe and beyond. The networking of learning centres at the
European level and the promotion of role models should be
supported by the Commission.

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Vă multumesc pentru atentie!
Thank you for your kind attention
October 24-25, 2013